Comments for Moneytrain to Midstakesville: Episode Two

DeKuip

I would like to talk a bit about his betsizing. He seems to be a thinking player and my experience is that those players are aware of their betsizes and stacksize. So when he makes this smallish bet on the turn, not really allowing himself to shove the river without overbetting, don't you sense any weakness because of that?

I mean, if he had KJ he would bet a few big blinds more to make sure that he can shove the river. I mean, he doesn't have to worry about his hand, so the only think he needs to think about is his turn betsize. So you can presume that his turnbetsize would be perfect for making a rivershove.

So when he bets too small and doesn't allow himself to easily shove the river without overbetting, can you use that to define his hand a bit more? The difficult thing is that his range isn't that big anymore after the flop check/raise so there aren't many hands left in his range anymore when you eliminate the hands he wants to shove the river with.

jk3a

I would like to talk a bit about his betsizing. He seems to be a thinking player and my experience is that those players are aware of their betsizes and stacksize. So when he makes this smallish bet on the turn, not really allowing himself to shove the river without overbetting, don't you sense any weakness because of that?

I mean, if he had KJ he would bet a few big blinds more to make sure that he can shove the river. I mean, he doesn't have to worry about his hand, so the only think he needs to think about is his turn betsize. So you can presume that his turnbetsize would be perfect for making a rivershove.

So when he bets too small and doesn't allow himself to easily shove the river without overbetting, can you use that to define his hand a bit more? The difficult thing is that his range isn't that big anymore after the flop check/raise so there aren't many hands left in his range anymore when you eliminate the hands he wants to shove the river with.

Keruben

On the A4s on the 643 hand i have to disagree with a call. Certainly there can be alot of air in villains range here. But if he is the type of guy to raise a low wet flop with air we are not getting to showdown profitable. Our hand is so face up as a bluffcatcher or draw. And he can pretty much represent the entire deck on the turn. If we think his range is weak enough for us to proceed id much rather 3B with the added bonus that we can fold out some of his equity.

Old Quiz: Boo-ya !

New Quiz: The easiest path is to establish our percieved range which is approximatly 99-JJ, AQ-AJ possible KQ and occasionally slowplayed QQ+ AK. Once we call the flop he knows we got showdown value. His range consists of everything from air to weak made which he didnt think he could get value from on the turn. His strongest hand(Ignoring FPS slowplayed stuff) once he checks twice should be KQ heavily discounted for since 3 of the queens are accounted for.

So with our river bet we want him to spazz out or bluffcatch. With the crux that since we always got SD value we will only valuebet. Since i dont expect anyone to spazz out without a read ill ignore that possibility. And leave it at the fact that whatever betsize hes most likely to bluffcatch with should be the one we choose to make. Wheter that is a small blocker or a jam to make him twist his brain into thinking we turned AK into a bluff.

spotDEspot

As I missed the first quiz due to there being 7 gazzillion replies already and I was sure someone else must have said he had exactly 98s before and I didn't want to be accused of copying....

Anyway that aside and now that I am ineligible I will happily embarrass myself first - for this one I think although villain's 3bet stat is high it is over a small sample and he is 3betting from the BB Vs UTG so his range here is still usually pretty strong - AQs, AK, TT+ maybe KQs, AJs.

He cbets 90% and obv will almost always cbet this flop anyway so that tells us little. His turn check narrows his range to something with showdown value that is check/calling TT/JJ type hands to hands that missed and are giving up - AK, maybe AJs. As we check back, our hand also looks like a JJ, TT, 99 type hand pot controlling and villain's stats would lead us to believe he knows this.

Once he checks the river his range is pretty weak so unless we know enough to expect him to bluff raise weak river bets then we should bet the maximum that TT/JJ can call, maybe around half pot OR we should overbet shove repping very little and hope he likes bluff catching hero calls....I kind of like the overbet shove but it doesn't work very often at 25NL or 50NL!

krumpy

I really like the emphasis that you're putting on volume jk3a. Last month was the first month that I've put in significant volume and I felt like it did wonders for my game.

I used to play quite a bit of chess and while blitz can definitely improve your game, slow chess and studying is without a doubt the best way to improve rapidly. Also, it's no surprise that very good blitz players are also very strong slow chess players as well. It's obviously not a perfect analogy, since your hourly is a big consideration in poker, whereas in chess no one really cares if you able to win 50 games in an hour.

But along those lines something I've started doing is mixing in a few two table sessions with my 4-6 table sessions. I feel like these sessions as well as study really help to develop the pattern recognition and thought process that's important for the multitable sessions.

I guess my point is that for me it's hard to improve when I'm playing 4-6 tables all the time even though this is best for my hourly and bankroll, therefore it's important to backup sometimes and play a low volume session to focus on improving my winrate/thought process, which in turn makes future multitable sessions more profitable.

krumpy

I think a reasonable PF range for him is TT+,KQ,AJ,AQ,AK, and maybe something like A7o as a bluff even though he doesn't have much of a bluffing range vs UTG. After he checks the turn and river I think we can pretty heavily discount KK-AA, so his most likely hands are TT,JJ,KQ,(maybe AQ that got scared, but I think AQ bets the river) and Ax that missed. I really like jamming here given the way we've played our hand it looks a lot like AK and i think it puts TT-JJ and any Qx he can have in a much tougher spot than like a 3/4 pot size bet. Also, we stack any weird slowplays, but I think you'll actually get looked up more often by TT-JJ and Qx here with a jam than when we bet smaller and look like we're actually value betting.

ohjoy

Quiz:When villain checks the turn, I think it's rather likely he has some sort of weak made hand or he has given up.

Our range is pretty strong for peeling the flop, we pretty much always have a pair. If he has a value hand, I see no reason for him to shut down on the turn. The 9 hits 99, so one set gets there, but in his eyes we pretty much have pairs here all the time. We might have QQ and slowplay, which would make sense, and we probably have a lot of QJs, KQs, AQs in our range as well. I think he has given up when he checks the river, and will have hands like maybe a weak Qx which he bluffed preflop, a 9x type hand and air (AK, AJ, AT whatever). Overpairs would probably go bananas on this flop, so I doubt he has those. I've seen some players cbet the flop here with hands like JJ just to shut down later on as well, so he miiiight have those.

The amount we should bet on the river, vs. a range which either is complete air or a weak made hand should be something like $12 - $16. I'd consider shoving, but without knowing anything about the metagame that has happened between Tom and the villain, I think I'd rather go for the smaller bet on the river. With this betsizing, I'm hoping to get a call from his weaker showdown hands. If he has trips with the 5, he's losing all his money anyways.

So, his range on the river is like weak showdown hands like pairs and ace high, although A high doesn't have a ton of showdown value, but it looks like it does. Maybe he has a hand like 65 from time to time, but 5x is shoving the river anyways so betting small is cool.

I don't really like shoving the river, because our range is pretty strong. We don't really have a ton of floats in our range and we can easily have a hand like AQ or 65 in our range given the price on the call preflop, and we can happily jam it in on the river because we know that his range is crushed by our range.

So again, I think the best betsize is like $12 - $16. I like the number $15 here. Weeeeeeeeeeeee. This post was shorter than the first one!

Edit:Oh yeah, I think he's likely to 3bet suited connectors and stuff, which is why I say he can have 9x or 5x here.

shaggy

The 12% 3Bet is irrelevant as UTG vs. BB is only going to be very strong hands. In case no one noticed Tecmo's stats on that table were in the 13/13 range. Villains range is AK, QQ+ here. Even AK and QQ are questionable.

Ok, So what does villain think a 13/13 is flatting UTG and calling a CBet with? The Nuts!!!!!!!!! Well, QQ, KK, AA

I say the best bet size on the river is a shove because villain is never calling but maybe he'll misclick. Seriously, villain checked twice, how is he going to call anything?

DiggerTheDog

Just on volume.I really hope Tom takes it carefully.You should not squeeze volume in at bad times.As a self-declared - monkey tilter - more volume can lead to bad consequnces.Make sure you are still fresh of mind and body when you play Tom.No volume for volume sake.